UK Companies: SABMiller To Pay £7bn For Fosters

UK Brewer SABMiller To Pay £7bn For Fosters

Brewer SABMiller has been given regulatory approval in its A$11.5bn (£7.2bn) deal to buy Fosters, ending a five-month chase by the Anglo-South African company for its Australian peer.

The management of Fosters, which owns brands including Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught and Pure Blonde, will remain in Australia as part of a deal with the Foreign Investment Review Board, which wanted to maintain the iconic brand's roots in the country.

The deal still needs shareholder approval at a meeting in early December, but is expected to go through by the end of the year. Buying a major brewer in a single developed market is something of a departure for the company.

SABMiller has remained solid in the face of difficult trading conditions in developed markets by investing in its emerging markets portfolio, tapping into high growth markets in Asia and Africa.

SAB has branched out into new local varieties to add to its familiar portfolio of Peroni, Miller and Grolsch. Many investors have been holding shares in the company in order to gain exposure to these fast-growing regions.

"Fosters is basically a landlocked Australian business, with the international rights having been sold some years ago to various parties," Collins Stewart analyst Eddy Hargreaves said.

"What it does give them is very strong cash-flow. Fosters' conversion of profits into cash is much better than SABMiller's at the moment. And then clearly they're optimistic about what they can do with what they find at Fosters, which I think everyone will agree has been poorly managed in recent years," Hargreaves said.

The motivation for spend big on Australia may be simply the lack of opportunities for acquisitions in those growth markets.

"Further emerging market deals are harder to find now. We've been through a decade of major consolidation in the industry, and therefore by definition further opportunities for consolidation are limited," Hargreaves said. "There aren't too many opportunities of scale out there to use their cash."

However, the deal could be a defensive one to fend off interest from Anheiser Busch InBev, he added.

Close

What's Hot